In various applications, it may be desirable to perform a variety of operations on data prior to storage. For example, to conserve storage resources, it may be desirable to perform a compression operation on data prior to storage. A column of dates in raw form may be [Jan. 1, 2012; Jan. 1, 2012; Jan. 1, 2012; Jan. 1, 2012; Jan. 1, 2012]T. The amount of storage required to store this column in raw form is greater than that for a run length encoded version (e.g., (Jan. 1, 2012; 4), where the first value is the pattern and the second value is the number of times the pattern is repeated after the first occurrence). It would be desirable if new storage systems were available which are easier to work with and/or produce better (e.g., compression) results.